This weekend was hard to bear. I spent most of my Saturday visiting one of the main former detention camps in Buenos Aires, the ESMA. In this detention camp, at least 5,000 people were incarcerated and tortured from 1976-1979. Unfortunately only 200 of them survived.  On this visit, I walked in the steps of the victims.  It was extremely sad and torturous to see the places where they were detained and tortured. I could smell and feel the horror that they felt when they arrived to this obscure site. I could imagine that once they entered this place, their lives were no longer under their control. I walked through the cells, barely big enough for a person to stretch their body, where they were forced to live and sleep, in their own waste and where denied the right to communicate even with other prisoners.  Even after 36-37 years, I could still hear their voices and feel their pain. In general, it was a truly moving experience for me.  While writing, I still feel the chills that I got when I entered the basement of the prison.

I spent Sunday visiting the Park of the Memory and conversing with people in charge of this institution. In this outdoor memorial, I read all the names of the victims that lost their lives in the hands of the last military dictatorship.  It is very sad to see name after name on the walls that are part of the memorial and it is even harder to know that many of the disappeared were 18 year-olds, young men and women.

Tomorrow, I will visit an advocacy organization. It is one of the national organizations that investigates case of human rights violations -- including those of the tortured and imprisonment people during the dictatorship.